Trump's Official Policy: If You Cross the Border, We'll Kidnap Your Children

The president hopes that forcibly separating parents from their kids will deter illegal entry.

A crying toddler calls out for his mother as he is kidnapped by armed agents of the state, who drive away with him in the back of their car. This is the face of Donald Trump's immigration policy. Even more appalling, it is the face he wants the world to see.

"If you cross this border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a speech this week. "If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law. If you don't like that, then don't smuggle children over our border."

In Sessions' view, a woman who flees political violence in Honduras with her 18-month-old son, hoping to find refuge in the United States, is a child smuggler who deserves what she gets. As for the boy, his suffering is part of the price that must be paid to secure the border.

During a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, the billionaire bully who currently occupies the White House berated Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, who was so upset by the experience that she reportedly drafted a resignation letter. (Presumably Sessions can sympathize.) According to The New York Times, Trump was enraged by Nielsen's "failure to adequately secure the nation's borders." One of his complaints was that "Ms. Nielsen and other officials in the department were resisting his direction that parents be separated from their children when families cross illegally into the United States."

Just two months ago, Nielsen's department was telling Reuters "it does not currently have a policy of separating families but that it does so at times if a child may be at risk." Now the official policy is to deter border crossers by threatening to kidnap their children.

Here is how White House Chief of Staff John Kelly explained that policy on NPR this morning:

The vast majority of the people that move illegally into the United States are not bad people. They're not criminals. They're not MS-13…. But they're also not people that would easily assimilate into the United States, into our modern society. They're overwhelmingly rural people. In the countries they come from, fourth-, fifth-, sixth-grade educations are kind of the norm. They don't speak English; obviously that's a big thing….They don't integrate well; they don't have skills. They're not bad people. They're coming here for a reason. And I sympathize with the reason. But the laws are the laws….The big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States, and this is a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long.

Sadly, Kelly comes across here as rather more enlightened and compassionate than his boss, who launched his presidential campaign by describing immigrants from Mexico as rapists, criminals, and drug dealers, while allowing that "some" might be "good people." Still, it is hard to follow Kelly's logic. Is he saying that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement would keep families together if the parents had better educations? What is the minimum credential required to stop strangers from snatching your 7-year-old daughter and shipping her 2,000 miles away from you? Is a high school diploma enough, or does ICE demand a college degree?

Last month the Timesreported that more than 700 children, including more than 100 younger than 4, had been "taken from adults claiming to be their parents" since October. If that is what happens when the head of the department that includes ICE is "resisting" the practice, hundreds could become thousands once Nielsen quits or falls in line.

Just to be clear: The current justification for snatching these children is not that the "adults claiming to be their parents" are not in fact their parents or that the children would be endangered if left with the adults who brought them. The deterrent effect that Trump, Sessions, and Kelly hope to create is based on the assumption that loving parents will hesitate to enter the United States without permission if they think they will lose their children should they be caught.

A class action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in March argues that "the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment does not permit the government to forcibly take young children from their parents, without justification or even a hearing." The ACLU also argues that the practice "violates the asylum statutes, which guarantee a meaningful right to apply for asylum, and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which prohibits arbitrary government action."

Legal issues aside, Trump's policy clearly violates widely shared notions of human decency. What does it tell us that the president of the United States is outraged when little kids aren't being torn from their parents' arms by strangers?

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My last month paycheck was for 11000 dollars… All i did was simple online work from comfort at home for 3-4 hours/day that I got from this agency I discovered over the internet and they paid me for it 95 bucks every hour…

What all this adds up to [Kelly’s spiel on immigrants] is the insistence that immigrants are not us and they won’t ever become truly American. Kelly might or might not be aware that that is precisely how his Irish ancestors were portrayed a century and a half ago, as uneducated brutes who brought nothing but crime and violence to America. Kelly is also of Italian descent; his maternal grandfather “never spoke a word of English and made his living peddling a fruit cart in East Boston,” according to an article last month in Politico. Yet he seems to have turned out okay.

It’s older than your absurd notions of libertarianism by a couple millennia and so much more widespread and popular that it can be found in most any language, used by both statists and freedom fighters, throughout history.

When did legislation determine natural rights? Are you also down with gun control, slavery, Jim Crow laws, civil asset forfeiture, rent control, and all other violations of natural rights?

You’re woefully misinformed. There are no such things as natural rights. Where do I go to find these naturally occurring things? Is there a mine where I can dig for them? Or a field where I can pluck them fresh?

Next thing you know, we’ll be slicing them up to make dogfood! Whatever it takes, to deter the illegal humans, seems to be the modus operandi for the Trump gang! MS-13 gangsters have more humanity and mercy than the Trump gangsters!

http://www.sciencedaily.com/re…..142724.htm Even brief maternal deprivation early in life alters adult brain function and cognition: Rat study “Children exposed to early-life stress or deprivation are at higher risk for mental illness and addictions later in life, including schizophrenia,” said study co-author Brian F. O’Donnell, professor of psychological and brain sciences at IU Bloomington. … … We can thank Trump for creating the next generation of the mentally ill, and criminals, which will be used for justifying future rounds of treating people worse than most of us would treat our dog!

Rats feel pain and humanoids feel pain. Human pain is somehow 10 billion light-years above rat pain, so rat pain is utterly dismissed? Or rats are superior to humans? Ergo human pain is summarily dismissed!? What is YOUR theory about rat pain v/s human pain? You summarily dismiss the opinion of a humanoid being who thinks that maybe, somehow, slightly, around the corner, the pain and suffering of an illegal human baby might actually be similar to the pain of a human baby born 50 yards on the RIGHT side of the river.

You are hereby summarily dismissed as well, you unfeeling NAZI-butt-kissing bastard you!

If the Honduran woman is seeking refugee status, why is she not applying for that status in Mexico, as international law says she should? If she does not do that, it is evidence she is not seeking political refuge. What is this resorting to an emotional appeal in service to a results oriented outcome?

In Sessions’ view, a woman who flees political violence in Honduras with her 18-month-old son, hoping to find refuge in the United States, is a child smuggler who deserves what she gets. As for the boy, his suffering is part of the price that must be paid to secure the border.

I’m wondering why they went past so many other countries in their desperate search for refuge, but I think we already know the answer.

No, I’m suggesting that the lure of taxpayer funded children’s programs is enough of an economic incentive to make the choice of the United States the logical choice but it also means ‘political refugee’ is what they were told they need to put on the form to be considered.

This may surprise you, but it can be both. You’d need to make a case for why we need more unskilled labor to do things like clean your house though, because from where I’m sitting our labor force participation rate is shit in the U.S.

Because of the welfare state. Labor force participation is shite because Americans don’t have to do things like scrub the floor to make ends meet – the state takes your money at the point of a gun and gives it to them.

So I can’t find a fucking American who’ll clean the house for less than 100 a trip for a freaking 2 hour job.

I want my house cleaned, I’m willing to spend 40 bucks to have it done, I’ve found someone willing to do it for 40 bucks – but you insist on inserting yourself in the middle of that trade because the person I want to trade with is part of a group you don’t like.

It’s not libertarian, but would you be willing to accept a pay cut of, say, two-thirds of your current salary to get to open borders? I ask this question of everyone that’s in favor of it, because it’s what needs to happen to get to your preferred outcome and it’s the most Libertarian solution on the board.

And when the lower-caste, lower-class Americans have too many babies, AND take too many of our jobs, THEY are OK, because THEY were born 50 yards on the CORRECT side of the line in the sand? Is that it?

So I can’t find a fucking American who’ll clean the house for less than 100 a trip for a freaking 2 hour job.

You can always try cleaning your own fucking house, lazy. Remember when Americans took pride in self-sufficiency? And you’re not even trying to keep a family farm productive–you’re just too pathetic to pull the vacuum out of the closet once a week.

Then why don’t they act to realize that in their home countries. It amazes me these people organize massive movements to walk thousands of miles for “freedom” but can’t be bothered to organize a movement in their own home cities.

I don’t even really care to look into the Honduran govt, if Venezuelans can rebel against their thug leaders that are the worst of the worst, then these other countries folks absolutely could too.

We need to pressure the real issue here, and it lies thousands of miles from our border

A class action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in March argues that “the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment does not permit the government to forcibly take young children from their parents, without justification or even a hearing.” The ACLU also argues that the practice “violates the asylum statutes, which guarantee a meaningful right to apply for asylum, and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which prohibits arbitrary government action.”

Uhh…I might not like this practice but the parent did indeed violate a statute so it would appear the ACLU (didn’t they change their name when they abandoned all pretense of being a civil rights group?) is that immigration law’s aren’t like breaking other laws because reasons. Their point regarding the APA seems silly since this isn’t arbitrary.

Does someone applying for asylum necessarily need to be in the United States while that application is processed, one might ask, and if they’re looking for asylum it’s odd they skipped over many, many other countries much closer by to hit up the United States.

I’m sure the fact that the United States offers expansive welfare, especially to children, had nothing to do with that decision right? And please note that I consider that perfectly rational of them, but also not very acceptable domestically.

Interesting on the asylum application for sure, and a bit ludicrous in my book but the justifications for it seem obvious in that if you truly need asylum forcing you to be in the country that’s trying to kill you would be…counter-intuitive. But it doesn’t particularly apply in this case since the person applying is not from Mexico, they’ve already escaped their ‘country of oppression’ so asylum wouldn’t make any sense unless you take it as-read that Mexico is going to kick them the fuck out unless they’re on their way to the United States (which, notably, is exactly what the situation is.)

That said, I’m curious if you believe the U.S. court system should even be used in these cases since notably there are several billion people on earth who would appear to have standing under this interpretation and I’m not sure taxpayers will be willing to foot the bill for six billion asylum applications from the 3rd world jamming up the immigration queue.

What needs to happen, and what will not happen, is that the entire U.S. labor regulation scheme needs to be torpedoed but you’ll note that the vast and overwhelming majority of Americans are deadfast set against that so I’m afraid illegal aliens are going to be the sacrificial cow.

Morons will want their cake and to eat it too, but they are morons. Why should we listen to morons?

It is, the ‘morons’ I speak of are the people that believe we can leave American labor regulations as an ever-tightening band while simultaneously thinking we can have open borders. The two are mutually exclusive unless you’re willing to admit that sometimes a slave class of non-citizens is what’s needed to support a welfare state.

This is actually the current thinking that most people are using, but of course they can’t admit this to themselves since it’s frankly disgusting. ‘Most people’ somehow manages to include at least a marginal number of libertarians, but I suspect those libertarians are just wearing it as a skin over their anarchism.

Wait wait wait. You mean that labor prohibition works like every other prohibition – the ratchet for enforcing the prohibition only goes in the direction of more and crueller deprivations of liberty? No way! I was told that labor prohibition was totes different than booze prohibition or drug prohibition!

The vast majority of the people that move illegally into the United States are not bad people. They’re not criminals. They’re not MS-13…. But they’re also not people that would easily assimilate into the United States, into our modern society. They’re overwhelmingly rural people. In the countries they come from, fourth-, fifth-, sixth-grade educations are kind of the norm. They don’t speak English; obviously that’s a big thing….They don’t integrate well; they don’t have skills. They’re not bad people. They’re coming here for a reason. And I sympathize with the reason. But the laws are the laws….The big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States, and this is a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long.

1. They’re not criminals.

2. I guess Kelly would be uncomfortable with one of them as a maid or gardener? Because these people have been assimilating just fine for generations.

3. Overwhelmingly rural? That’s a bad thing? If it weren’t for those ‘overwhelmingly rural’ people at the last election you wouldn’t be in this job John.

5. They don’t speak English, and this is a big thing why? This is America, you can speak whatever language you want.

6. But the law is the law – cry of the slavecatcher the world over.

Oh, and the real question is – what are they doing with these children? Because if they’re staying in the US then that won’t deter anyone from trying to cross with them. That will actually encourage more. If they’re being sent back then that won’t deter anything either.

To be honest, it’s overly kind to say these people have even a 4th grade education. They don’t have any formal education at all in many cases, so ‘reading’ is more of an ephemeral concept to them even in their native languages. It’s one reason why we refer to illegal aliens as ‘low skill labor’, because the only things many of them are capable of doing with their skill set is clean a house, mow a lawn, or some other menial job.

Also, consider that many of them may actually know how to do ‘important things’ like repair vehicles or some other ‘blue collar’ industry that’s more advanced, but they are not certified and might not even be able to become certified at all. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but in Mexico their vehicles aren’t exactly the same as here in the U.S. since it’s not uncommon for vehicles down there to still use a carburetor which isn’t going to translate to America.

That doesn’t mean they’re subhuman, it means they’re uneducated but ‘education’ costs dollars even here in the United States. Obviously, they’ll ‘integrate’ just fine as the last 250 so years of American history proves just fine all on it’s own.

The fact of the matter is that laws and regulations that are sacred cows to the left are the very things standing in the way of their preferred outcome of almost entirely open borders.

To be honest, it’s overly kind to say these people have even a 4th grade education. They don’t have any formal education at all in many cases, so ‘reading’ is more of an ephemeral concept to them even in their native languages.

When did the conversation switch to homeschooled right-wingers from Mississippi, or Republican graduates of religious schools in Mississippi and Oklahoma?

You mean those “homeschooled right-wingers from Mississippi, or Republican graduates of religious schools in Mississippi and Oklahoma” that routinely out-perform the kids that emerge from the public “education” system?

Sure, they outperform . . . if you’re a goober who credits ‘the earth is a few thousand years old,’ ‘evolution is just a theory, launched from the pits of hell,’ and ‘fairy tales are true’ as correct answers.

So, we can’t educate the natives to a satisfactory standard but more immigrants will solve the problem. Nevermind that it is known* that non-natives don’t necessarily perform at the same level as their native majority peers or that, in order to gain parity with the native majority, you demonstrably lower the education levels of the whole group. What’s important is that you’re using a negative association to prove a positive.

The wheels are broke and the axle’s draggin’ but, sure, cram a few more people into your little red wagon.

5. They don’t speak English, and this is a big thing why? This is America, you can speak whatever language you want.

See above. This wouldn’t be a problem if we didn’t educate on the principle of equality of outcome, but we do. It’s a pretty obvious oxymoron that you can’t have it both/all ways.

6. But the law is the law – cry of the slavecatcher the world over.

You’re the one who wants to educate them to a lower standard than the already poorly educated and ill-equipped natives and then let them compete in the workforce at that lower standard (all the while advertising equal outcomes). Does it make you feel better knowing that you didn’t *intend* to enslave them?

4. No, but if its not causing us problems that the natives are uneducated (by our own standards) its not going to cause problems that some dudes form SA aren’t educated.

5. You’re preaching to the choir here. I don’t support equality of outcome. There is no conflict here for me.

6. I don’t want to educate them at all. I want to leave them alone to fend for themselves. Its the people that want to ‘help’ them that are causing the majority of the problems you complain about. I don’t support welfare. I don’t support any of the leftist causes that you are saying are the root problems caused by immigration.

“If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law. If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.”

This logic is genuinely deplorable, but it’s not just deplorable because it’s suddenly being applied to illegal aliens. Not that Sullum is saying so, but the issue of using the fear of sending your children into foster care to try to scare people to comply with the law–be it the drug war or anything else–is positively disgusting any way you slice it.

The one thing that might be defensible is prosecuting parents for sending for their kids to transverse the border alone. There was a huge wave of this several years ago, and I don’t see any reason why CPS shouldn’t get involved–just because the parents are illegal aliens. The state might have an interest of protecting the rights of children from parents who’ve both abandoned them and encouraged them to do something that’s indisputably dangerous and potentially life threatening . . .

That being said, depriving children of their parents and parents of their children simply because they tried to come to American together is probably cruel and unusual punishment. Whether violating people’s rights this way is also a deterrent to illegal immigration is completely beside the point–if burning people alive were a deterrent, that would hardly make it morally acceptable or constitutional.

It’s a case where the stated reason appears to make the same action that was going on previously worse by perception, but I can’t imagine that they were putting the kids of illegal immigrants that were detained anywhere different than they are now.

I’m wondering about medicals for the kids. People get all up in arms about detaining, screening, and seperating migrant families but this has gone on forever, and is basically neccessary for our security.

In the ellis island days we were screening people for diseases like polio and tb, not cartel ties, terrorism, or human trafficking. Tens of thousands of families were separated, with members suspected of being sick detained and quarantined for weeks or months at a time. My great great uncle was one of them, kept in new York for nearly a month while the rest of the family came to Pittsburgh.

Fast forward to today, and a kid can’t join public school kindergarten without a slew of immunizations. Same goes for colleges. I think most states even require a physical still for something like a drivers license.

So imo, if the kid is staying here they should be taken, screened, and immunized before they set foot amongst our children.

*if they plan on using govt services. I’m not pro vax or anything like that. But if a kid can’t get into school without medical clearance, we should apply a similar standard to our border, or change the standard.

Illegal immigration, per se, is a victimless crime. They hurt no one by coming here. As for them using welfare resources, the crime occurs when the government extracts resources from citizens by force , which is technically legal and is called taxation.

In Sessions’ view, a woman who flees political violence in Honduras with her 18-month-old son, hoping to find refuge in the United States, is a child smuggler who deserves what she gets

The American border is a thousand miles from Honduras, across the whole of Guatemala and Mexico. In Guatemala she might be a refugee. At the US border she’s an economic migrant trying to jump the legal immigration queue.

There’s nothing morally wrong in trying to better your economic circumstances, but there’s no conceivable reason for the United States to allow people to jump the legal immigration queue just because they have a young child.

The more I hear bitter wingnuts talk about the immigration, the more I favor instituting completely open borders when the tiny fingers of backwardness, bigotry, and superstition are removed from the levers of our government.

Maybe we should start deporting the losers who have demonstrated that they can’t keep up with or appreciate our society even with the huge head start of American citizenship by birth.

Samantha Smith was murdered. Bar Harbor 1808 was sabotaged. It was a conspiracy. The KGB did it.

Source: I’m actor Robert Wagner. I worked for the KGB from 1979 to 1989. All those years I was cosying up to Reagan I was providing intel and influence on behalf of the USSR. Samantha Smith was a threat to Soviet plans for a large scale, bi-coastal invasion of the United States by hundreds of thousands of soldiers. She was disposed of via my assistance in ensuring KGB infiltration of strategic positions in the FAA.

Actually I made all that up. So I guess Mexicans will still attempt to emigrate to the USA and it will be just as dangerous and miserable a process as it has been for decades. I’m sure there’s a way around this.

I don’t understand why the parents and kids aren’t just shipped back from whence they came the second it’s verified they aren’t citizens. These illegals need to go. If we don’t enforce the law it will only encourage more to come. Non enforcement is why it got so out of control in the first place.

I don’t understand why the parents and kids aren’t just shipped back from whence they came the second it’s verified they aren’t citizens. These illegals need to go. If we don’t enforce the law it will only encourage more to come. Non enforcement is why it got so out of control in the first place.

Even as a citizen, your rights are suspended within a certain distance of the border, but on your side. You can be stopped, searched and your property seized in the name of enforcing immigration laws. REASON has had articles about this.

But, a non-citizen, once they have stepped across the border, gets the rights you may have been deprived of, such as a requirement of a “due process” before they are sent back from whence they came. By the same judges, who have permitted all the violations of citizen’s rights, mentioned above. Now that makes sense, doesn’t it?

America’s “legal” system rivals the mainstream media as the biggest enemies we face.

Why should I be tolerant of some wankers illegally coming into my country? I’m part beaner myself on my moms side… But I have a lot of very legitimate reasons for not wanting a flood more people coming in too quickly. I could go on for days about the downsides, but the only theoretical upside anybody can ever come up with is that it keeps wages down! Which is ALSO a downside for a lot of people in the USA.

Well, that and the feelz. But I’m not a feelz guy. So I say fuck these people. The USA doesn’t owe it to anyone to screw our country up for our citizens so we can improve the lives of some random ass foreigners. We can’t cram all 7 billion people into the USA, and I don’t want to keep cramming people in until we do hit a breaking point.

I’m bitching about there being 10 million ish people in the country that shouldn’t be here. And all of their progeny that ALSO shouldn’t be here.

They all need to be sent home. So says a part Mexican. We don’t need unskilled labor being imported in a post industrial economy. As a leftist surely you can appreciate the plight of the working man having his wages suppressed by an access of unskilled labor? As non-commie as I am that is one of my main gripes with illegals. That and how they vote.

Punishing parents by taking their children is unconscionable. And yet I don’t hear a single peep from Americans when it’s used against suspected drug users. They don’t just take your kids, they use them as weapons.

It is not just used against drug dealers. It is also used against murders, attempted murders, armed robbers, burglars, embezzlers and anyone else who commits a felony and are imprisoned. Should we let all these people go because they are separated from their children?

I don’t go to church but 45 loves photo-ops with pop commercial religionists. there is no Love, Compassion or Mercy of the Gospels reflected by 45 or Jeff. Families escaping rape and murder in countries where we actively support drug wars with money and manpower deserve asylum.